"Caleb: Old...But Not Finished"

(A Sermon to Celebrate God's Power in People of Any Age)

Joshua 14:6-15

Introduction:

Nearly 60 years ago, I had a Des Moines Register paper route in Fort Dodge, Iowa, where my family lived when I was in junior high school. We lived in a poorer section of town and it wasn't a big route. I had tried knocking on doors to drum up some more customers, but had had very little luck. One door I didn't knock on was the home of an elderly lady. She was known in the neighborhood for yelling at the boys to stay away from her lawn.

One day I got a call from the circulation manager telling me that the the next evening, he was bringing in a group of other paper boys to knock on doors and see if we could increase the number of my customers. For every person the other boys signed up, they would get a couple of dollars, which was big money in those days.

When the evening was over, we gathered to discuss the results. I had gained a few new customers, including the lady who yelled at boys. Not exactly what I wanted. I began delivering her paper. Then came collection day. I knocked on her door, she answered, I told her what I was there for, and she paid me. No problem. The next week, I knocked on her door again, and this time she invited me in for cookies and milk. When I told one of the boys in the neighborhood what had happened, he said, "You didn't eat the cookies did you? She probably put poison in them!" Well, she didn't, and I never had any trouble with her.

Other than old relatives, this woman was the first elderly person I had ever had any real dealings with, and I learned right away that you can't judge someone from the outside. Old does not necessarily mean crabby. Old does not necessarily mean out of touch. Old does not mean finished with being useful and put out to pasture as we Iowans like to say.

Take Caleb, for example.

Let's look at some important things about Caleb's life.

I. First, Caleb Believed God

The event in our text for this morning had its origin 45 years earlier in the history of Israel.

The Israelites had left Egypt and were led by God to the east bank of the Jordan River. On the west side lay the land that God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Numbers 13, God tells Moses to send some men to explore the Promised Land. From each of the 12 tribes, Moses is to send one man.

Now what's interesting is why this is necessary in the first place.

Is it to give Israel a preview of the wonderful land that they're going to receive?
Is it to show Israel how difficult it is going to be to conquer the land?
Is it to show Israel that the whole enterprise is going to depend on God's presence and help?

I personally think it was a test: a test of how much Israel would rely on themselves and how much Israel would rely on God.

What happens when the 12 spies go into the Promised Land? Ten see the problems from a human perspective; two see the challenges from the perspective of a powerful, helping God. When the spies report back to Moses and the nation, the ten acknowledge that the land "does flow with milk and honey," and they show an example of the fruit that grows there.

But there are problems:

The people who live there are powerful.
The cities are fortified and very large.
They saw descendants of Anak (described elsewhere as giants).
Some of the people lived in the hill country (making it difficult to attack and conquer them).

Why are these things a problem?

Because the spies are looking at themselves, not at God.

They are pointing to themselves and recognizing that they are not adequate in themselves to conquer the land.

God is not part of their strategy for taking the land, and because God is not of the strategy, it is obvious that the land cannot be taken.

If there's a test here, it is a test of whom the people will believe and trust.

Caleb (and Joshua) believed God, and they believed that with God leading them, they would take the land. Caleb and Joshua go on to tell the people:

"...do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them." (Numbers 14:10--NIV)

But the people are afraid and decide not to go into the promised land.

As a result the nation is condemned to wandering in the desert for 40 years until all the unbelieving adults 20 years old and older have died-with the exception of Caleb and Joshua.

II. Second, Caleb not only believed (or trusted) God; He had also filled his heart with God.

Three times in the few verses of our text for this morning we find the phrase "followed the Lord wholeheartedly" applied to Caleb. It's the same phrase used of Caleb by God in Numbers 14:24, when God says that Caleb has "a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly."

The phrase literally means to "to fill one's heart to walk behind." In other words, when applied to a heart for God, it means that the heart contains nothing against God. It is fully, completely for, or following behind, God.

Not running ahead of God.
Not making decisions that go against God's desires.
But following behind God.

In the book of I Samuel 15, there's an incident that illustrates making a decision against God's desires. King Saul, the first king of the Israel nation, has been told to attack the Amalekite nation and to put to death every man, woman, child, infant, cattle, sheep, camels, and donkeys. The command could not be clearer.

Yet later, when Samuel, through whom God had given the message to Saul, checks on the result of the battle, he finds that the Israelites have spared the king of the Amalekites, and the best of the sheep, cattle and lambs. When Samuel reaches Saul, Saul says, "The Lord bless you! I have carried out the Lord's instructions." (I Samuel 15:13--NIV)

In one of my favorite replies in the Bible, Samuel answers, "What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?" (I Samuel 15:14--NIV)

Okay, I don't understand why God ordered the wholesale destruction of human beings, including children and infants, but the issue here is obedience and disobedience. Clearly, Saul's heart was filled with more than the things of God. In fact, it's popular to say that:

Saul had no heart for God.
David had a whole heart for God.
Solomon had half a heart for God.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian writer who spent years in Soviet concentration camps, wrote several novels condemning the communist system. In a speech in London in 1983, he gave his views on what had happened.

"I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."

He was not necessarily saying that because men had forgotten God that God had caused the atrocities associated with the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. He was simply saying that when people forget God, they become open to other ways of living and thinking, and other ways of treating human beings.

That principle has not changed.

How do you fill your heart with God? Let me give a few quick and simple suggestions:

Read and study the Bible.
Pray for understanding and spiritual growth.
Spend time with God's people.
Eliminate from your life activities that you know do not please God.

People sometimes think it takes a long life of experiencing God and getting in line with God in order to be wholeheartedly for God. Don't forget that Caleb was described as being wholeheartedly for God 45 years before our text today in Joshua. The secret is not age; the secret is filling yourself with the things of God and that does not have to wait for old age.

III. Third, Caleb, Having Believed God and Filled His Heart with God, Lived as a Person who had Believed God and Filled His Heart with God

Without believing God and filling our hearts with God, living as God's people can be a difficult thing.

When I was growing up, our family moved a lot. One of our last moves during my high school years was to Lake City, Iowa, the town where I was born and the town we moved away from and back to a few times. It was the beginning of my junior year in high school when we moved back, and, in fact, I missed the first few days of school.

It wasn't long before the football coach was after my brother and me to go out for football. I wasn't really very anxious to do so, being a man of peace, but my brother and I finally agreed. We had already missed a couple of weeks of practice held at the end of summer. Then we discovered that we had to wait for another week or so before they could get shoes big enough for us.

The day finally arrived and we went to our first practice. After some strenuous conditioning drills (made more so because I had missed a few weeks of practice), I found myself lined up on defense waiting for the offense to put the ball in play. All of sudden everything began to turn green, then black, and I couldn't see a thing and I didn't feel all that good. (I forgot to mention it was a hot day!) I didn't think I'd be very effective trying to stop the play if it came my way. I don't remember if the offense ran the play before I regained my sight or if the play went in another direction, but I do know it wasn't long before I was pretty much back to normal.

Trying to obey God with a heart full of everything but God is like trying to play football without being able to see. You might get lucky, but probably not.

You may be wondering: after that rocky start to my football career, did I turn out to be a great player?

No.

Did it bother me?

Not really.

When it's the end of the season, the temperature is below freezing and you're sitting on the sideline all bundled up, it feels good to know that you're not good enough to get unbundled and onto the field.

But that wasn't Caleb's attitude.

Caleb would not be content to take the easy way.

Look what he says about Hebron:

"Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites [the giants] were there and their cities were large and fortified..." (Joshua 14:12--NIV)

The same things that terrified the 10 spies 45 years earlier-the hill country, the giants, the large and fortified cities--do not frighten Caleb.

"...the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said." (Joshua 14:12--NIV)

Caleb did not just decide he was going to take Hebron as his new home. His decision was set within the context of a godly man who believed that if he was faithful, God would be faithful. It didn't matter whether Caleb was young or old. He was ready to move into the promised land when he was 40. Now that he's 85, he's still ready.

It wasn't a matter of age; it was a matter of attitude, a matter of his relationship with the Lord.

As I've worked with seniors and others over the years, that's one of the lessons I've learned.

God desires people devoted to God.

God desires people who have filled their hearts and lives with the things of God.

For us on this side of the cross, it begins with a commitment to bring Jesus Christ into our lives as the heart of our lives. To quote John the Baptist talking about Jesus, "He [Jesus] must increase; I must decrease." (

That's where it begins.
That's where the godly life begins.
That's where the life of usefulness to God begins.
That's where the taking of large, fortified cities filled with big people begins.

Are you ready for that?

Sources:

The quote from Solzhenitsyn can be found at www.roca.org/OA/36/36h.htm
All Bible quotations are taken from the New International Version of the Holy Bible